The Trappings and the Suits of Woe
by Maddeningly Mad
Summary: Amy stumbles across the Doctor while he's struggling through a nightmare and it forces her to realize how little she actually knows about the Doctor. Set pre-Season 6. Expected to be 3 parts. Doctor/Rose, Amy/Rory.
1. Chapter 1

**The Trappings and the Suits of Woe**  
_~Maddeningly Mad~_

* * *

_Part I_

She has come into the library because sleep is eluding her and it has been hours since she'd gone with Rory to bed, and books have always been her remedy for sleepless nights. She is thinking that she'll find some trashy romance novel and curl up on an armchair and bore herself to sleep. She is not expecting what she sees.

He is asleep, _asleep_, like any regular human bloke, stretched out on the sofa with a thick leather-bound book opened across his chest, one hand splayed atop it and the other dangling off the edge of the cushion. His bow tie is askew, one of his braces is slipping down over his shoulder, and his breathing is soft and steady. The normalcy of the scene is almost unreal - but, then, the Doctor never was one for _normal_, now, was he.

Amy studies the Doctor, really looks at him; sees the permanent furrows around the sides of his mouth, the bags beneath his eyes that never seem to fade, the shadows filling the hollows of his cheeks. Awake, he is quite mad and quite silly and quite, well, _childish_, and sometimes his darkness spills out of him in ice or in fire, but he seems fine, mostly. Asleep, he looks old. Tired.

She never thought she would be a witness to this. Never, not once, has she seen him asleep of his own accord. There was, of course, the incident with the Dream Lord, but that sleep had been forced, unnatural.

Amy sits in an armchair opposite the Doctor and clasps her hands together on her knees. She's not sure why, but she can't just leave him. There's something about his face when he sleeps, something vulnerable, that requires her presence. As if simply by sitting here she'll keep him safe. She lets out a long, slow breath, and closes her eyes. The TARDIS is humming. Time is lethargic and heavy around them, and she finds herself - for once - content to sit still.

A sharp inhalation, unnaturally loud in the quiet, breaks the trance. Amy nearly jumps, certain that something or somebody is sneaking up on her, but - no. No, they are alone in the library. Amy clutches the arms of the chair until her knuckles turn white, half-standing, ears straining. She flicks her eyes around the room - nothing. Amy lowers herself until she is sitting. She keeps her eyes open.

The sound happens again, not a moment after she's let her guard down. This time, she is looking directly at the Doctor when it happens. She sees the sharp crease in his forehead, the sudden tightness of his jaw, the white-knuckled pressure of his hand on the book.

Slowly, Amy stands. With a sort of dim foreboding, she notices that he's trembling. Barely, but he is. Shoulders shaking and then a whimper spills over his lips and he shifts onto his side. The book falls with a heavy thud onto the floor, but the Doctor doesn't seem to notice. He's curling into himself, tucking his face into his arms, drawing his knees up until he's in the fetal position. He exhales, a ragged, wet sound that makes it seem as if he's ... crying?

"Doctor. Stop it." Amy moves forward, all jerky motions and hands that are clenching and opening and clenching again. She is standing over him, afraid to touch him, afraid to back away, afraid to look away. "Doctor. _Doctor_." She reaches out to touch him, hesitates, but at another ragged gasp she steels herself and clutches at the Doctor's shoulder.

The Doctor flinches and draws further into himself. He's moaning something - a name? - over and over again, a word punctuated with soft sobs and _no_'s and _please_'s, and she's panicking now, well and truly panicking.

"Doctor, stop - _fooling around_!" She hits him - slaps him across his arm - and when that doesn't work gets down on her knees and grabs his shoulder. "Wake. Up!" she screams, shaking him, and he's not waking up, he's saying _please_ and _no _and something about flowers and her heart is hammering so fast is hurts. She spies his sonic, grabs at it, aims it into his ear, doesn't bother checking the settings. She activates it, and it's so loud that she cries out in shock and falls back onto her bum.

The Doctor jerks awake, panting, sweat gluing his hair to his forehead, flinching so severely that he nearly falls off the couch. His eyes are wide and red and, yes, he has been crying.

Amy sits up and says, shakily, "Doctor?"

His head whips around until his eyes meet hers. He looks feral, like a wild animal that has been startled badly, and she finds herself moving slowly towards him. She needs to reassure him, needs to let him know that she's _here_, she's _now_, but ... he doesn't seem to recognize her.

Again. "Doctor?"

There. A glimmer of recognition and he is slowly sitting up, swiveling until he is sitting properly on the couch. He holds up his hands, stares at them. Brings his hands to his face and applies pressure, pulls downward slowly - wiping away all evidence of his breakdown.

She tries a third time. "Doctor, what's - what happened?"

He is moving like the old man he is. He stands and has to sit down again because his legs are too shaky to support him. He balls his hands on the couch and hunches his shoulders and looks down at his knees and breathes.

Amy clambers to her feet and stares down at him for a moment, unsure. She's not quite sure how to proceed - but, if anything, Amy is stubborn and perhaps a little careless, so she goes ahead without thinking. "What the hell was that?"

The Doctor says nothing. Exhales.

"Doctor, you're _scaring _me. Was it a nightmare?" Silence. "The Angels? The Daleks? ... River?"

"You should go," the Doctor says, and his voice is low and rough and too old. He isn't looking up at her, still staring at his knees.

"Tough," Amy says. "So it's about River, was it? Did she - were you watching her die? Or maybe it was me and Rory? Come _on_, Doctor, talk to me."

The Doctor stands so abruptly that Amy is almost forced to take a step backwards. He is standing too close to her for either of their comfort; their chests are mere centimeters apart, and although he is hardly taller than she, he seems to be looming over her. The look in his eyes is terrifying.

Amy has seen the Doctor angry before, yes, even furious, but that pales in comparison to the look she sees now. He is livid, raw grief and pain and rage and something feral in his eyes, and Amy realizes with a sort of sick astonishment that this is the Doctor without his masks; the man he has tried to hide from her since the day they met.

"_Amelia Pond_." The Doctor spits out the words as if they were poison. "_Go. Back. To bed._" He is terrifying like this, all sharp edges and fury, but Amy draws herself up tall, clenches her hands into fists, and fixes her very best glare on him.

"No."

Looking him in the eye is painful, but she manages. His mouth is working slowly as he stares at her, almost as if he is chewing on his words to prevent them from escaping. Silence stretches between the two of them, taut and fragile. She waits for him to speak, because he will, oh, he will. He always does, in the end.

(At least, that's what she tells herself, pushing unanswered questions and graceful evasions to the darkest corners of her mind; this is her fairy tale, after all, her Doctor; she has to believe that she is the one he trusts).

The Doctor takes a deep, deep breath and closes his eyes, holds it in. More quietly than before, voice strained, he says, "just go to bed, Amelia. I'll be fine." He sidesteps her before she can respond and lurches toward the entrance, shoulders stiff.

"Oi!" Amy calls after him. "I'm not done with you yet!" She takes a step after him, but he whirls on her, fury once again present on his face.

"Amy, Amy, _Amelia _Pond. _Leave it alone!_"

And with that parting remark, the Doctor spins on his heel and exits the library. Amy hurries after him, confused, tired, and angry as all hell, intent on giving him a piece of her mind. The hallway is empty when she gets to it, but somewhere she hears footsteps. Less furious, now; stumbling, dragging, the walk of a man long since defeated.

Amy tightens her hand into a fist and holds it over her heart. "Doctor," she whispers, and _now _she is tearing up. She blinks the tears away, drags in a deep breath. Pushes herself away from the doorway and makes her way back to the bedroom she and Rory share.

She wonders what the Doctor dreams of. What could be terrifying enough to make him lose control.

To Amy's surprise, Rory is awake when she climbs back in bed. He mumbles something like, "you disappeared," which sounds much more like _mmf dis'pear_. He pulls her close against his chest and nuzzles his cheek against her hair and makes a sloppy attempt at a kiss on her hairline. She lets him get away with it because she's Amy and he's Rory and some things are just meant to be.

When Rory's breathing has evened out and deepened, and his hold on her relaxes, Amy turns in his arms and stares at him. Looks at him just like she looked at the Doctor; drinks in all the details that make him hers.

She should have gone after him, she realizes. Run after the Doctor when he was running away from her, because she has Rory and Rory has her, but who has the Doctor got? Should have wrapped her arms tight around him and been his friend, his best friend, instead of demanding answers. Should have been there for him.

Against her will, Amy drifts off in Rory's embrace. She dreams of something golden and grass that smells of apples and of an old man tending to his rose bushes that grow but do not flower.

* * *

**A/N: **Yeah, yeah, I know I should be working on Aphelion instead of an unrelated mini-series, but I started sketching this idea out three weeks ago and it's taken me three whole weeks to find enough time to write an 1800-word drabble ... thing ... . Anyway. Reviewing would be nice. This is a fairly rough draft, so if anything sounds awkward or the tense shifts, etc, please let me know.

This is expected to be Part 1 of 3.


	2. Chapter 2

**The Trappings and the Suits of Woe**  
_~Maddeningly Mad~_

* * *

_Part II_

The Doctor stumbles to a halt before a nondescript door in the fashion of his old console room, all organic lines and soft, humming metal. There are no markings on the door to suggest it is in any way special, but the sight of it makes his left heart spasm. He raises his right hand and traces his fingers over its surface. Beneath his fingertips the patterns shift, rearrange themselves, until he is looking at a Gallifreyan depiction of her name.

He is not expecting the sudden tightness in his throat, nor is he prepared for the heat that stings the back of his eyes.

He tears his hand away from the door and forces himself to turn away, blinking rapidly. Draws in a deep breath and holds it, tilts his head back, squeezes his eyes shut. Clenches his hands into fists at his sides and tries to force a swallow past the lump in his throat.

Without thinking, he finds himself turning back to face the door. His entire body is tense; his hearts are constricted with longing, an emotion so intense the pain of it almost cripples him. He opens his mouth, finds himself forming the shape of her name. Presses his lips tight together, and he feels old, so very, very old. An old (mad)man who stole a box and ran away and bathed himself in the blood of billions and turned his own planet to dust. Stupid, petty old man who was (is) reckless and careless and so desperately in love and he ruined it (just as he ruined the lives of so many others) and he is so

_damn_

tired of feeling this way.

He's not crying, but he's damn close. Hands clenched, fingernails digging into his palm with the strength of his fists, and he relishes the pain, clings to it. He shouldn't be scared to utter her name, shouldn't be afraid to open the _door _to her _room_, because it's in the past, she is _gone_, she is off making the Other Him better where he'll never see her again and _that. Is. That._

_It's _over, he thinks to himself, furious, white-faced, shaking. _Over. _

She has Other Him now, and he has – well, he has Amy and Rory, and River, he supposes, but he can't quite stop himself from looking for her in a crowd, straining his eyes to catch some remnant she left behind. Her words, scattered across time and space. He tells himself that he isn't desperate to get some indication that once she was alive and well and _here_, with him.

He tells himself that he's over it, over _her_, that what feelings he had for her have been lost between regenerations.

(Oh, but he's never quite been able to convince himself that he's not the same man, always, and that his hearts don't stutter in his chest when he spies the words _BAD WOLF _somewhere or sees a blonde woman in the corner of his eye).

The Doctor turns his back on the door. Walks away. Walks back. Glares at it, jaw working, hands clenching and relaxing in turns. With a frustrated cry, he slams his fist against the wall and immediately regrets it. He curses vehemently under his breath in a language full of fire, cradles his hand against his chest, panting. The TARDIS hums at him, something soft and musical and encouraging. The door opens, just a crack. He stills.

He is quiet for a long moment. Then:

"I can't. I _won't_."

Beneath his feet, the floor of the TARDIS bucks and sends him off balance. He stumbles and says, "what is _wrong _with you?" He glares at the walls, which pulse back at him. The TARDIS hums again, insistent, demanding.

The door swings open another inch. He catches a glimpse of a faded purple bedspread, the corner of a dresser, a nightstand. His breath catches in his throat. His hand lifts of its own accord, just barely grazes the surface of the door. He hesitates.

The TARDIS is silent. Holding its breath.

"Alright," he finally says, voice quiet, subdued. "Alright."

He straightens up and takes a deep breath, pushes a still-shaking hand back through his hair. And then he reaches out again to push open her door, and for the first time since he wore pinstripes and mania like a second skin he walks into Rose Tyler's room.

* * *

Amy wakes abruptly, shifting from deep sleep to full consciousness in the time it takes a human to blink. She lies still for a long moment, wondering how she could have possibly fallen asleep after what happened with the Doctor. Guilt tightens her stomach for a moment, but she forces it away; it's not her fault he's being stupid. She'll just have to get him to talk.

Rory is stirring beside her, nose brushing against her temple as he shifts. Light is spilling into the room from the faux window the TARDIS had installed for them; it's morning. Amy tilts her head to look at Rory. They don't have much room in the bunk bed for some of their favorite night-time activities, but sleeping like this, pressed up against her husband for fear of falling out of bed, is nice.

She's going soft, she thinks, and scowls. She shoves at Rory, not so nicely, when he squeezes her a little too tight. "Oi!" she snaps. "Wake up, will you?"

Rory jerks into an upright sitting position, slamming the back of his head into the wall as he does so. "Bloody _hell_!" he says, adding a few choice curse words under his breath. "G'morning to you, too, Amy."

"Something happened last night," she tells him without preamble, sitting up as well. "With the Doctor."

He groans. "Oh, don't tell me he's gone and done something stupid like set the pool on fire again."

"No, you idiot. Besides, that was partly your fault! Men." Rory opens his mouth to disagree, but Amy twists her face into a glare and immediately he falters. He nods at her to continue. "No, he – I couldn't sleep, so I found him in the library. He was _asleep_, and having… I don't know, having a nightmare or something."

Rory rubs at his eyes and stifles a yawn. "He's over nine-hundred," he points out. "Bound to have nightmares every once in a while, right? C'mon, it's _the Doctor_. He'll be fine. He always is."

"He was crying," Amy says, stubborn, and watches as Rory's expression transforms into one of shock. "He was crying, and he was hurting, and I couldn't wake him up. And then when he did, he just … "

She trails off and shakes her head, unable to put to words what she had seen – the wild, unchecked emotion in the Doctor's eyes, the fury lining every sharp edge of his face. She closes her eyes briefly. "He's done so much for us, and I can't figure out how to help_ him_."

Rory puts an arm around her. She lets him. "Maybe he doesn't need our help," he starts, and Amy nearly smacks him.

"You – of course he needs our help! He's just too stubborn to admit it." She gets out of bed abruptly and wraps her dressing gown around herself. While tying the knot, she says, "we just need to, you know, get him to open up to us. He tells me everything, eventually."

Amy turns back to look at Rory, who's swinging his legs over the side of the bed. He blinks up at her, then scrunches up his face. "Wait a minute, did you just say _'we'_?"

"Yeah, I did. So? We're married now. You have to do whatever I say."

"Isn't that how it was before we got married, too? Not, of course, that I'm complaining," Rory hastens to add when Amy fixes her very best _you're sleeping in the doghouse tonight _glare at him. "But, it's just – it's like you said, _you're _the one he talks to, not me. What do _I _have to do with it?"

"You live here, don't you? Keeping the Doctor emotionally stable is basically the same as paying rent." Amy runs a quick hand through her hair and shoves her feet into her slippers. "I'm going to look for him. Are you coming or what?"

Rory rubs his eyes and stifles a yawn, then gets up. "Of course I'm coming," he says, and he leans in to give Amy a good morning kiss. When their lips have disengaged, he adds, "'sides. It's like you said. Married, now. Amy and Rory Williams – _Pond_! Amy and Rory Pond. If you think he needs help, fine. I'll help."

Amy smiles at him. "See, I _knew _you were still a pushover," she says, and she laughs at him before grabbing his hand and pulling him out the door with her.

"Amy, I – really? I'm only wearing pants!"

"Oh, fine, go change then if you're such a prude. Meet me in the library. Alright?"

"Fine, fine. Yeah. You go, I'll catch up. Oh, and Amy – "

"If you say 'don't do anything stupid', god help me I _will _smack you."

" – I was just going to say good luck."

A pause. "Right. Sorry. Love you. I'll see you in the library." Amy leaves with a flourish of red hair, disappearing down the corridor before Rory remembers to say that he loves her, too.

Just to be safe, though, Rory makes sure to yell down the hallway at her, "love you too, Mrs. Pond!"

Her laughter echoes.

* * *

The library is almost deathly quiet when she enters, footsteps echoing. The library has always been a source of comfort to Amy, full of fairy tales she can fall into the pages of and words she doesn't quite understand but loves the lilt of anyway. Now, however, she cannot suppress that chill that runs up her spine when the floor – wooden, oddly enough – creaks beneath her feet.

When first she enters, the library is dark, but as she makes her way further in, the TARDIS bathes the room in warm golden light. The library hasn't been rearranged at all since last night, which is strange; it isn't unusual for sub-rooms or books in the library to shift around three or four times a day.

Amy steps close to the sofa where the Doctor had slept and very nearly trips over the thick volume he'd been reading prior to falling asleep. Cursing, she kneels down to pick it up; it's even heavier than its size would suggest, and she has to use both hands to prevent straining herself. Once the book is in her hands, she lowers herself down on the couch and casts a critical eye over its cover.

The book is bound with dark leather, obviously ancient, and it lacks any sort of cover art to speak of. Amy turns it over in her hands with difficulty; like the front, the back is blank. She opens to a random page. Blank. Flips to the front page. Blank. Rifles through the pages, getting more and more frustrated when she realizes that every single one of them is blank. "What the _hell_?" she mutters, and closes the book again to glare at its cover. "What is this, Harry Potter?"

The TARDIS hums. Loudly.

Amy groans and flops backward on the sofa. Something sharp digs into her back and she yelps, then reaches a hand beneath her to dig around for the cause of her discomfort. When she pulls out the object, she is pleasantly surprised to find that it is, quite simply, a pen, and not some strange sort of living creature that had crawled on board. Then her surprise turns to confusion and she spends a moment looking at the pen, then at the book, then back at the pen.

"You are kidding me," she says after a short silence. "You have _got _to be kidding me. A diary? He writes in a _diary_?"

She flips open the book again, rustles through it. Still blank. Picks up the pen and scrawls in the corner of a page, "the Doctor is a pansy". The ink remains clear and solid. She groans, then tosses the book aside. It lands with a heavy thump next to her on the sofa, face-down, pages crinkled beneath it. Amy puts her chin in her hands, rests her elbows on her knees. "Great," she grumbles.

"Messing with things that aren't yours, Pond?" a voice, the _Doctor's_ voice, says a moment later, and Amy very nearly jumps. He is not standing in front of her; rather, he's right behind the sofa, but by the time Amy has turned around, the Doctor has managed to clamber onto the cushions from the back.

"Where did _you _come from?"

The Doctor ignores her question, reaches across her lap to pick up the book. He picks it up easily, as if it weighs nothing, and hefts it in a single hand. He is frowning at it, eyes glazed over. Amy takes the opportunity to examine him; he still seems tired, sunken, brow casting deep shadows over his eyes, but as she watches his lips twitch into a small smile when he sees what she wrote.

"A pansy? Really, is that all you could come up with? And no, actually, it's not a diary, nor do I write in it. Well, I do. Write in it, that is. But not for the reason you think."

"You're not making sense," Amy says bluntly.

"Do I ever?" the Doctor says, and he plucks the pen from Amy's hand. "No, no, no. Not a diary at all. Actually, it's a record, of people to be specific, so I suppose that does make it somewhat _'diary'_-like, but, no, really, it's not." He presses the tip of the pen to the paper, then hesitates. He smiles a slow, sad smile and looks over at Amy. "Would you like to see, Amelia Pond?"

Instead of answering his question, Amy says, "are you ever going to tell me what happened last night?"

The Doctor's grip on the pen tightens. He says nothing.

Amy sighs. "Yeah. I'd like to see it. If it's okay."

The Doctor nods, one sharp jerk of his chin. Then he begins to write.

Well, no. Perhaps write isn't the word. He is undeniably writing _something_, creating words, but they are not at all Earthly in origin. With a sort of awe, Amy realizes – once the Doctor has drawn three perfect interlocking circles, all of them of a different size, and is starting on a third – that he is writing something in his native language. She has never seen him do this before.

The Doctor spends the next minute or so perfecting the last of the word. When finished, he leans back slightly to allow Amy to see. It is beautiful; swirling and ethereal and yet so precise, so mathematical, that it almost doesn't see real.

Despite her awe, Amy begins to say, "is that it?" when the page begins to shift, the ink moving of its own accord to form a rough sketch that slowly fills in, becomes more lifelike, until she is looking at a picture – a photograph? – of a young girl with dark hair cropped short, a mischievous look on her pixie-like face.

Amy's brow furrows. The Doctor's hands, she notices, are trembling, but the rest of him is perfectly still. He hardly seems to be breathing. She turns the page. Another picture of the same girl, grinning, showing off a beautiful dress that seems to be alive. Another page, another picture, all of the same girl with short, dark hair.

Amy doesn't bother picking her words carefully. She never has. "What, so this is a … a collection of pictures of pretty girls to look at when you're 'lonely'?"

Judging by the confused expression on the Doctor's face when he tilts his head to look at her, he doesn't quite understand what she's getting at. She shakes her head. "Oh, never mind. What is it? Who is she?"

"Her name is – was. Susan. Her name was Susan."

Amy nods slowly. "Right." She notices the way he's looking at the page, the grief in his eyes, and she takes a wild stab. "She's, uh – she's very beautiful."

He takes a moment to respond. "I suppose so," he says. "She looks like her mother. I took care of her, you know. Well, she took care of me, too. We were exiled – well, _I _was exiled, but she was a stubborn child, even then, and she came with me. Susan. My granddaughter, you know."

"I - _what_? Your _granddaughter_?"

The Doctor looks at her properly, faint eyebrows raised. "What? I was – well, I was a dad, once. Of a sort. Not much to being a father in Gallifrey, really. Bit of DNA extrapolation from all designated parents – and we could have three or four or twenty-seven parents, if we wanted, but that's a bit ridiculous, really, gives new meaning to that whole _takes a village to raise a child _thing – and they're grown in the Loom. But, yes. I had children. And grandchildren. Obviously."

Amy nods. It's about all she thinks she's capable of doing at this point. "And this – this book, it's entirely devoted to your … to your granddaughter?"

"Oh, no, no, no," the Doctor says breezily, and with a quick slash of his pen across the page the picture is melting away, until it is as blank as it was before. "No, it's a compilation. Write a name – that was her name, in Gallifreyan, only works if you write it like that, this is actually from Gallifrey, you know – and pictures show up. Of how I remember them best. The pictures change, you know."

"How Harry Potter," Amy says again, and the Doctor smiles at that.

"You know, I had a companion, once, who said that quite a bit. Martha, her name was. There were some witches witching about. Well, not witches. I ruined her life. Made her walk the earth for a year while her family was kept hostage, tortured, and humans were being slaughtered by the millions." A muscle in the Doctor's jaw twitches. Amy puts her hand over his. He's never talked to her like this. She doesn't want to ruin it.

The Doctor squeezes his eyes shut. He seems to be fighting the urge to run. Amy wraps her fingers around his. _Talk to me_, she thinks, desperate.

After what seems like forever, the Doctor says, "I've lost so many people, Amy. Ruined their lives, or ended them. And it's my fault, because I was stupid. Because I was selfish. Too arrogant, too weak."

"Doctor," Amy starts, but he _shush_es her, shaking his head. He starts reeling off names, causes. There is a lump growing in Amy's throat, moisture gathering in her eyes, because she is realizing what he's saying – listing all the people he's lost, and _why_. "Adric. Cybermen. Dodo. Trauma from hypnotism. Jamie. Memories wiped. Victoria. Traumatized her. Sarah Jane. Thought I left her in Aberdeen, ended up destroying her life. Romana. E-Space." And then he is listing names, just _names_, names of people who died or are dead, and his words are getting faster and faster and he's clenching his fists together.

"Doctor, stop," Amy says, voice shaky. But he doesn't hear her, doesn't pay any attention to her, just keeps on rattling off names, voice reaching a shout when he says, "my own _people_," and then she slaps him, slaps him hard.

The silence that descends upon them is stifling.

"Doctor," Amy tries again, "it's _not_. _Your_. _Fault_. Yeah, you can make mistakes sometimes, but so does everybody! Think of everybody you've _saved_. You saved me, you saved Rory. You saved the _entire universe_!" Her voice quiets to a murmur. "Why can't you see that? And those companions of yours, the ones who – the ones who left, or died, or – they wouldn't have given up this for anything in the world. This, traveling with you? I wouldn't trade it for anything."

"See, that's _just_ the kind of thinking that gets you locked up in a parallel universe with a dirty half-human _clone _of the man you –"

The Doctor cuts himself off. His hands are tightened into fists.

"What are you _talking _about?" Amy says. The Doctor lowers his head slowly, then stands up.

"It's nothing, Pond. Are you satisfied yet?"

"No. I'm not." Amy stands and crosses her arms, cocks her hip, taps her toe. "What's that last part about?"

The Doctor doesn't – can't? – meet her eyes. "Just another mistake," he says, and then begins to walk away.

"Oh, no you don't," Amy says under her breath, and she grabs at the Doctor's arm, forces him to turn around to look at her. "You are _not _leaving until you tell me _what _last night was about and _what _this whole thing with a clone and a parallel universe about, because I am _worried_, Doctor, you are _scaring _me. I want to know what's going on. You're my _best friend_." Her voice softens. "I don't want you getting hurt."

The corner of the Doctor's mouth quirks up, but his eyes are so old, so tired. "And what could you possibly expect to do about it, Amelia? I'm old. _So _old. Older than I've told you, I've _forgotten _how old I am, that's how long I've lived."

Amy tightens her hand on his arm. "Just tell me, Doctor. Stop making excuses."

He hesitates. He wants to tell her, she can see that. Can see that in his eyes and the sort of downward twist his lips make that isn't quite a frown, his stooped shoulders. But he's struggling, can't bring himself to say the words she _knows _are on the tip of his tongue. Amy waits.

"I dreamt I was losing her all over again," he finally says, voice low and stilted, and his entire body seems to deflate. "I thought – I dreamt she came back, to the TARDIS, to _this _universe, her _proper_ universe, back to _me_, where she _belongs_. But I couldn't save her." He's shaking his head slowly. "I can never save her. I've never got enough _time_."

The Doctor pulls his arm away from Amy, and this time she lets him go, lets him walk away from her with his back hunched and his hands shoved in his pockets. He's almost out the door when she calls out to him, "wait, Doctor."

He turns back so he can see her, just barely. Amy takes a deep breath. "What was her name? The girl?"

The Doctor seems to draw in on himself even further, and as he tilts his head his eyes fall so deeply into shadow Amy cannot see his expression. "Rose," he says finally, and his voice catches on the name. "Her name was Rose."

* * *

By the time Rory makes it to the library, Amy has been alone, curled up on the sofa, for nearly twenty minutes. He makes a profuse apology about the TARDIS moving the corridors around so that he kept ending up in a messy bedroom done in tones of purple he'd never seen before. Amy ignores his apology and pulls him down onto the cushion with her, wrapping her arms tight around him, burrowing her face in his neck. He doesn't say a word, just holds her, strokes her hair, waits for her to speak.

In the console room, the Doctor pulls up footage from the library on a screen and stares at them together on the sofa, his face blank. His right hand twitches and searches for a hand that should be there but isn't.

* * *

**A/N**: I may just leave this here, but if enough people are interested, I'll add another chapter. I've got more to say on this subject, but I don't want to overwrite it too much. Thoughts?

Also, if anybody notices any tense changes, grammatical errors that don't seem to be intentional, spelling errors, etc, it'd be great if you could point them out in your review. Thank you.


	3. Chapter 3

**The Trappings and the Suits of Woe**  
_~Maddeningly Mad~_

**A/N: **Warning: crude language ahead, if you're offended by that sort of thing.

* * *

_Part III_

For the first day or two after Amy forced the Doctor to speak to her, she and Rory are unable to find him. When they wake on the third day, however, he is bouncing about the console room, acting much like a toddler who has devoured his weight in sugar. Amy opens her mouth to ask him where the _hell _he'd been, but Rory shoots her a look and, for once in her life, Amy listens. She won't give up on it, Amy decides while the Doctor sets the coordinates for Flimmoo-something, but she'll compromise. She'll give him time.

And so she's been letting the Doctor get away with acting like everything's fine, like nothing's happened, like he hasn't opened up to her more explicitly than he's ever done before. It worries her, Amy confides in Rory, the way that the Doctor can compartmentalize things so well. Rory agrees, and not because he is scared of Amy. He is worried, too; Amy can tell, because at night when they're lying curled together she can _feel _his anxiety, virtually hear the thoughts running through his head.

As the week progresses, their worry only becomes more pronounced. The Doctor seems happy, most of the time, but his mood is volatile and his rages when they are put in situations he doesn't know how to get them out of are terrifying to behold. And yet as soon as he manages to save them - as he always does - he's dandy and chipper and never once does he mention his breakdowns, never once does he mention his loss of control. And he disappears into the bowels of the TARDIS for hours on end, claiming repairs or vanishing without warning. Amy hasn't seen him eat, not once since she confronted him. His cheeks, already hollow, are sunken. The shadows beneath his brow have swallowed his eyes whole.

Amy and Rory flounder to come up with ideas of how to breach the subject of their concern. They've decided that this time they'll talk to the Doctor _together_, make sure he knows they're both there for him. And, perhaps, restrain him if he attempts to run. The Doctor had been far more reluctant to talk about Rose than he had been to talk about the death of his people; Amy has a feeling that getting him to open up about the mysterious woman will be like yanking out teeth. She's not particularly looking forward to the confrontation.

(Perhaps she is, a little. She thinks all of Rory's bullocks about having to _bring up the topic gently _is just that: bullocks. It's easiest to just be blunt. But he's her husband and she loves him, idiot that he is, so she lets him think he's being clever.)

The fact is, though, that all this waiting and worrying and stewing is practically driving Amy crazy. So, one night nearly two weeks later when she can no longer stand the seemingly light-hearted antics of the Doctor as he describes in great detail one of his rather more ingenious escapes, she blurts out, "can you just shut _up _already?"

There is silence for a moment as both Rory and the Doctor stare at her, Rory shaking his head in warning while the Doctor looks rather amused.

"Why is that, Mrs. Pond?" the Doctor says, and he leans back against the console and smiles one of his infuriating half-lipped smiles-that-isn't-really-a-smile-but-a-sneer at her. "Am I _boring_ you?"

"You just keep _talking_, all the time, and you never actually _say _ANYTHING! I just don't get how you can be so ... so fucking _annoying_!" Amy says. When the Doctor lifts a hardly-there eyebrow at her and opens his mouth - presumably to tell her off for using coarse language - she groans and throws up her arms. "And you don't even get why it's a problem! How can you be so ... so ... ?"

"Devastatingly attractive? Intelligent? Barmy? I rather like that last one, actually - "

"So bloody _alien_!" Amy finishes in an explosion of breath, and the silence that follows that is longer and more poignant than the first.

"In case you hadn't realized," the Doctor finally says, "I am, in fact, an alien. Well, technically, from my viewpoint, _you're _the alien, but, seeing as you're the one who came up with the description - "

"Oh, shut up," Amy all but growls. She's shaking her head. "You know, when you want to stop acting like nothing's happened and I didn't find you _screaming and crying _on a _couch _while having a nightmare about some girl you won't even _talk_ to me about, _that's _when I'll start listening to you again. Come on, Rory. Let's go."

Amy doesn't bother to check if Rory is following her. He always does. She hears his scrambling footsteps just a few moments after she storms out of the console room, knows that he is just a few steps behind her, there if she needs him. She doesn't know where she's going, following random twists and turns in the TARDIS and not caring, just needing to get _away _from the Doctor, as far away as she can before she bloody gives up and kills him.

She is fuming; she can't tell why she exploded so suddenly, nor why she's so bloody _furious_, but she lets it stew. Holds onto it, tight, in her chest, so that thick bands tighten around her heart and constrict her throat and, god, she is so _angry _at him because once, just once, can't he let her see into his head and _let her help?_

Amy nearly screams in frustration. In fact, she does just that: lets out a good scream, at the top of her lungs, full of fire. "_FUCK _you!" she screams to the ceiling, sure that somewhere the Doctor is watching her because he somehow _always _is. For good measure, she makes a very rude gesture at the walls of the TARDIS. "_Fuck _you. Fuck _YOU_, you stupid, bloody, pig-headed, stubborn _ARSE_!"

"Whoa, whoa, Amy, okay, calm down," Rory says, and his hands are suddenly on her arms and he's turning her around so they can see each other, face-to-face. "Okay, Amy, I know you're mad - "

"Mad? _Mad? _I'm not mad, I'm fucking FURIOUS. He's being a prat and he's all 'oh, look at me, I'm the great big Time Lord, I don't need help', even when he BLOODY CLEARLY DOES, DID YOU HEAR THAT, YOU ARSE?" She bellows that last bit at the ceiling. Then, breathing hard, she pulls away from Rory and starts stalking away from him again.

Like always, Rory follows. He lets her blow off steam, is quiet when she's cursing at walls and telling the Doctor he's being a stuck-up, stubborn _git_, and, oh, it's because she's _human_, isn't it, she couldn't possibly _understand_, well, _fuck you_.

Amy tires herself out eventually, and Rory is there to wrap his arms around her and let her tilt her forehead against his cheek.

"Feeling better?" Rory asks her after several minutes have passed. His hand is cupping her skull, fingers gentle on her scalp, and she nods against his skin.

"Yeah," she says. "It's just - I don't know how to help him, Rory. I don't know what to do."

Rory is silent for a moment. "We should start a club," he says. "Get t-shirts."

"Oh? And what would they say?"

"Not a clue. I suppose the Doctor'll have to think of something clever. That's his job, anyway."

Amy smiles a little into his neck and pulls away from Rory, then looks over his shoulder and frowns. "Was that door here a minute ago?"

"What door?" Rory asks, and that answers her question well enough. Amy spins Rory around, and he spends a moment contemplating it. "Oh," he says. "That. That does appear to be a door."

"It does, doesn't it. And, oh, look," Amy says, and turns on her heel to survey the hallway, "we now appear to be at a dead end. Very sneaky, old girl. I wonder what she could possibly be trying to tell us."

"It's probably full of books on anger management – kidding! Kidding!" he says, hasty, when Amy turns to glare at him.

"Don't be stupid. The TARDIS wants the Doctor to open up as much as we do." Amy smirks. "Ready for some snooping, Mr. Pond?"

Rory grins his sort of oh-my-god-I'm-so-lucky-to-be-yours smile that always makes Amy want to do something like grab his cheek and coo at him. "Always," he says, and he steps forward, pushes the door open.

Then stops. Groans. "You've _got _to be kidding me," he says.

"What? What is it? Move over, you big lump."

Amy steps around Rory, who's saying, "I can't believe I walked into it, _again_, I've been walking into this room for _weeks_." And she slows to a halt and stares, because what she's seeing is so completely out-of-place she's not quite sure if her eyes have gone wonky.

It's … a bedroom. A bedroom, cluttered and lived-in and brimming with personality and so very, very wrong. The owner could have just stepped outside to go to the loo, but there is something in the air, something heavy and still, something that makes Amy's heart clench.

Amy shushes Rory, who's still muttering about how annoying it is to keep walking into this room when he's looking for the loo, the library, the pool, the Zero Gravity room, the garden …

He shuts up, then advances to her side. "What?" he asks. "It's just a room. He's had plenty of people on board before."

"Yeah, I know. Of course I know. But this – can't you feel it? It feels … I don't know. Doesn't it give you the creeps?" Rory shrugs, and Amy doesn't even bother rolling her eyes. She feels as though she's holding her breath. "And anyway," she continues, "why would the Doctor keep an old room in the TARDIS exactly as it is?"

"Well, it's not as if he's not got enough space."

Amy doesn't answer him. She steps closer to the bed, notes the way the purple duvet is tossed carelessly so that it's dragging on the floor on one side, the pillows strewn about. Her throat is growing tighter. The Doctor's chant of all the people he's lost, all the people's he's killed, plays in her head, over and over. She steps backward and tears her gaze away.

"Amy," Rory says, slow, hesitant. "Come and look at this."

Amy doesn't want to, wants to shut the door and leave. But she crosses the room to Rory's side and looks at where he's pointing, and almost doesn't understand.

She hadn't seen it before, walking into the room, because her eyes had been focused on the bed and the easy, human carelessness of it. But this, before her, isn't careless, is precise and heart-breaking and god, her heart hurts for him.

It's a shrine. It's the only thing it possibly could be. On a small, cleared-off table, an arrangement of tokens: a purple top folded into a sharp square, a pink and yellow rose lying across it, an IOU for ten pounds, and three photographs in golden frames.

In the first photo a young, bleach-blonde girl with eyes heavily done in mascara has her arms around the waist of an older man with brilliant blue eyes and cropped short hair, who has one of his arms around her shoulders. She is grinning at the camera; he is looking down at her with a small smile on his face and a look in his eyes that is soft and, even on paper, clearly adoring. In the second photo, the same blonde girl, now with a shorter cut, face more angled, more mature, is standing pressed against the side of a tall man with wild hair wearing a brown pinstriped suit. Their hands are interlocked, and he is smiling down at her with that same soft, adoring look in his eyes the older man had. Her head is on his shoulder and her eyes are closed, but a content smile is curled around the edges of her lips. There's no question about who either of the two men are.

The final photo, in the position of honor, is of the blonde girl alone, laughing, cheeks flushed, lips red and full, hair blazing golden from the touch of the sun.

There's no question about it.

Amy swallows hard. "It's Rose."

Rory nods, slowly. "And I just thought the TARDIS was being annoying, you know, having a bit of fun. But she – she was actually trying to _take _us here. To tell us about her."

Amy reaches forward to brush her fingers across the final picture, and says, quietly, "she's beautiful."

Equally quietly, a voice behind the two of them says, "yes. She is."

Amy jumps, and she is sure that Rory does, too, if the startled noise he makes is anything to go by. Standing just a few meters behind them is the Doctor, looking very old and very tired. Amy's not sure how he can do that, be so damn _quiet _sometimes that he can sneak up on her like that, but she's almost too relieved that he's _here_, that he's not running away, to care. She wants to hug him badly, but she holds herself back.

The Doctor's gait is somewhat off-kilter has he takes the last few steps towards the shrine. Amy steps to the side to let him pass, but he doesn't move any farther forward. Just takes a deep breath and places his hands in his pockets and stands far, far too still.

Amy needs to say something.

"Doctor, this – it's Rose. Right?" He nods. "And these – these are you?" Another nod. "You knew her in two bodies. So you traveled with her a long time."

"Not long enough," says the Doctor. "But, yes."

Amy hesitates before asking the next question, wondering if it's _too _forward, and is surprised when Rory says it before she does. "You were together."

The Doctor is quiet for a long moment, just stares at the picture and hardly seems to breathe. Then, more quietly than before: "yes."

Amy and Rory look at each other. Then Amy says, "you were in love with her."

The Doctor smiles, a sad, rueful thing that is more of a twist of his lips than anything else. "I don't think I'll ever stop," he says, and that's when Amy reaches out and touches his arm, still unsure if she should hug him, unsure if he'll welcome it, but he turns with a sigh and pulls her closer and hides his face in the crook of her neck. The Doctor is trembling. Amy tightens her arms around him and rubs her thumb across his back, and is not surprised to hear a muffled whimper and feel the evidence of tears against her skin. Rory steps closer and puts one arm around the Doctor's shoulders, presses his lips against the crown of Amy's head, and they stand like that for some time, offering the Doctor what comfort they can.

Later that night, the Doctor begins to talk. Haltingly, and his voice often fails him and fades away into silence, but he tries. Their story – the story of the Doctor and Rose Tyler, the suff of legends – is too long, too fantastic to be told in one night, but Amy and Rory go to bed knowing that the Doctor will talk to them again. And he does; for weeks, he tells them stories of gasmask-wearing zombies calling for their mummies, and of cat-nuns and Christmas with Charles Dickens and ghosts, of days spent running for their lives, of days spent visiting Rose's mum or lounging in the Time Vortex, of spending months and months carving the perfect likeness of Rose. When he tells them about the Battle of Canary Wharf, his voice is bleak and his eyes are blank, and when he is through with Bad Wolf Bay he wanders into the tunnels of the TARDIS and Amy and Rory let him.

He tells Amy, finally, about the clone, and Amy isn't sure whether to slap him or rock him back and forth like a child. She settles on both.

It is less painful for the Doctor to talk about his Rose now. Amy can see that, clear as day. Just as clear is the expression on his face, the small smile and the downward tilt of his head and the longing in his eyes, and Amy is sure he'll never stop missing her, never stop belonging to her.

But, Amy decides one day as she and Rory sit curled on a sofa while the Doctor eagerly shows them pictures of him and Rose on Ajidna-7, on Clarox, on Gunoole, on Kussain, his hearts are healing. His wounds are fading. The scars will be there until his death, she is sure, but the ache will not be so severe.

And that will have to be enough.


End file.
